Israel plans 1,300 homes in Arab East Jerusalem

JERUSALEM: Israel is pushing ahead with plans to build 1,300 new apartments for Jewish families in Arab East Jerusalem, the Interior Ministry said on Monday, despite fierce opposition from Palestinians.

The timing of the announcement could prove an embarrassment for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the United States looking for ways to revive Middle East peace talks that have stalled over the issue of Jewish settlement building.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said plans for some 1,300 Jewish housing units in two neighbourhoods on land Israel seized in a 1967 war had been made public, passing another procedural stage towards eventual construction.

She said the public could still raise objections to the plans and it could take a long time before building commenced.

“It can take months or years from this point until

NASA’s Search of Water on Moon Fails

WASHINGTON: The recent attempt from NASA to bomb moon surface in search of water has failed to achieve success as the dust appeared with the blow of rocket did not carry possible water vapors.

After gearing up for the space agency’s much-hyped mission to hurl two spacecraft into the moon, the public turned away from the sky Friday anything but dazzled. Photos and video of the impact showed little more than a fuzzy white flash.

In social media and live television coverage, many people were disappointed at the lack of spectacle. One person even joked that someone hit the pause button in mission control.

Yet scientists involved in the project were downright gleeful. Sure, there were no immediate pictures of spewing plumes of lunar dust that could contain water, but, they say, there was something more important: chemical signatures in light waves.

That’s the real bonanza, not pictures of geyser-like eruptions of debris, the scientists said.

The mission was executed for “a scientific purpose, not to put on a fireworks display for the public,” said space consultant Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator for science.

Scientists said the public expected too much. The public groused as if NASA delivered too little. The divide was as big as a crater.

“We’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood to expect the money shot, like ‘Deep Impact’ or when Bruce Willis saves us from a comet,’ said physicist and television host Michio Kaku, who was not part of the mission. “Science is not done that way.’

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NASA’s Search of Water on Moon Fails was first posted on October 10, 2009 at 5:13 pm.